Gidget Ignores Red Flags - The Finale

Welcome to The Way We Work: Tales from The Office

Greetings, community.

My intro is a little different. The world is worlding and it’s hard not to feel like we’re growing in a sea of regression. Journalist and economist Katica Roy wrote about the 300k Black women who have been pushed out of the workplace since the beginning of the year back in July. It’s now closer to 400k and this is a big portion of the workplace, and yet it doesn’t feel like the workplace is talking about it. Few HR people and few leaders seem to be doing anything and yet so many were calling themselves allies a few short years ago.

Personally, this past year I have been exploring what it means for me to be impactful and have hope/faith when the conditions are critical and not just when they are favorable. I call on others who have some agency, power, or influence to do the same because, if we don’t help each other have a better workplace, what are we even doing?

With that we are reaching the finale of Gidget’s red flags in her newish job. Gidget, a Black woman who is the only and possibly the first in her company, is navigating some pretty familiar territory for many of you. My hope is that you find something here that helps you shift the workplace to make it welcoming for everyone.

Our stories at work matter.

I hope you enjoy them as they marry the two gifts I have: impactful work and writing.

Previously on Gidget Ignores Red Flags

• Part 1: The Interview Process

• Part 2: The First Few Weeks

• Part 3: The Offsite

• Part 4: Dinner or Debate?

Gidget Ignores Red Flags - The Finale

“Remember when I offered to drive to that offsite and help you escape?” Gidget’s bestie was helping her pack.

“I should have said yes,” Gidget answered.

“Nah,” Bri replied. “You did the right thing.” She threw back her last swig of rosé and added another book to the box.

“I’ll miss this place,” Gidget said, looking around at her home — the one she fought for — the first in her family to buy a house. Possibly the last, since she didn’t plan on having kids, like ever, and she had no blood siblings. 

“Onward,” Bri said. “Homeownership is not a stress you need right now. Let someone else worry about plumbing or a broken dishwasher.”

She was right. But how did we get here?

The offsite was uneventful and just as Gidget suspected, literally everything they planned and whiteboarded was forgotten the moment the market changed and new plans needed to be made. It wasn’t until Charlotte, the CFO, sent her a message that she really got a sense of what was going on.

Charlotte: Can you chat?

Gidget: Sure. Hopping off a Zoom.

Charlotte: No, in person. I’m in your town.

Gidget: You are?

Charlotte: Yes, but don’t tell anyone. Happy hour at my hotel later?

Gidget got that pit in her stomach but agreed. She put on her hard pants, her lipstick that made her look like she had a full face of makeup, and drove downtown to meet mysterious Charlotte, who had barely said two words outside of the usual budget jargon. 

When Gidget got to the bar, Charlotte was there already with an espresso martini in front of her. She looked super polished and had a sly grin on her face as Gidget walked up to greet her. Charlotte was not a hugger, so they shook hands and sat down at the bar. Gidget motioned for the bartender to repeat Charlotte’s order.

“Let’s make a real girl’s dinner and order fries and Caesar salads,” Charlotte said in her deep, raspy voice.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Gidget laughed, still uneasy. Charlotte ordered for them both and then turned back to Gidget.

“I’m leaving the company,” Charlotte said finally. Gidget, never one to play poker, knew that her immediate reaction was all over her face. 

“I know. It’s a shock. Not everyone knows. Only the CEO”—Charlotte never called him by his name unless he was in the meeting or in their presence—“Legal, and now you. And I’m telling you as one woman of color to another—it’s time.”

“Wait. What do you mean time? What are you doing? Where are you going? What IS happening??” Gidget sipped her martini.

“I know I haven’t been the warmest, and I want to apologize to you in person. It’s not you. It’s that place. It’s how I was in that place. It’s not a friendly place for us, and I’m not saying there’s like Klan activity. I’m saying the privilege they have is not one they see, and it’s creating an environment that’s not good. So I’m leaving. And I wanted to tell you in person because I see how hard you work and you deserve this.”

“You flew here to tell me in person?”

“No no. I had a meeting with my new company one town over, so I felt like it was a sign for me to reach out. Listen, I was burned out when you joined. It’s no excuse to not be a good steward and give you the 411, but honestly, I also have been burned by doing that in the past. I reach out to a fellow woman of color and I tell her the deal, and that gets blown back up in my face. I didn’t know you well enough to know what you would do. But again, burnout. But now I’m telling you that you should leave or you will get left.”

“Are you saying…they’re going to fire me?”

“It’s not just you, Gidget. The finances are not great—not because of my team—but because they don’t listen. We should have been doing a lot more pivoting and planning and less playing at that offsite which, by the way, cost way more money than we budgeted before. But God forbid we look like we don’t have the money we don’t have. They don’t listen. So now there will be hard decisions and I think layoffs are coming.” Charlotte stuck a fry in her mouth after she ran it through the salad dressing. 

“How long do we have?” Gidget suddenly didn’t want anything to eat. 

“A few quarters, maybe? I’m just telling you now because you know what happens when a CFO leaves. People get panicked. I don’t want you to get panicked. I want you to be smart. I know you love your team, so you want to help them. I’m not announcing my departure until a few months from now after the board meeting. So there’s time. But I’m gonna be a little MIA.”

“What about Head of HR?”

“Well, she probably knows now because she’s the right hand to the CEO, and he’s panicking for sure. He had no idea I would leave. I’m not sure why. It’s not like we are close or anything. I think he’s never had an executive leave before? I don’t know. I can’t be worried about that man’s business.”

“Wow…” Gidget sipped her drink.

“It’s a lot. But you’ll be fine. And just know that you have a fan in me. I have seen you change that team around in a way that I have never seen. So if there’s anything I can do for you, just ask.” Charlotte held up her drink. Gidget held up hers and they clinked glasses.

“To better pathways,” Gidget said. She was smiling, but her mind was already racing.

The next week, Gidget started to shrink her team. She called a few of her marketing colleagues and asked them to have their recruiters poach her top performers and the ones with promise.

In her team leads meeting that week, she used her No Business Five Minutes time to talk about opportunities. She watched the faces of her leads as she told them that there is never anything wrong with having discussions about opportunities beyond what you are doing now.

“The whole point of working is to contribute your best and grow yourself so you can continue to contribute your best,” Gidget had said. A few of the perceptive ones gave her the knowing look. A few of the team players looked at her in a blank stare. Yet, one by one, over the next few months, her team started to get smaller. There were tears and beautiful words exchanged, but Gidget knew, after the first two left and she didn’t get approval for a backfill, she was doing the right thing. She pretended to fight for the backfill with the Head of HR and the CEO, cc’ing Charlotte, but this was all performance.

“Can you do more with less?” the CEO wrote back. “Just for now? We will be doing a headcount strategy in a few months that will help turn things around. Your team is doing a great job, but I think we are in this time of asking more.”

This was also the time her usual recruiter told her the market was getting dry. She had put some feelers out for her own future and it was looking bleak. This is when Bri suggested she dump her house.

“We both know you bought that house because you wanted to be the first. And every time something needs fixing, you start cussing up a storm. Sell the house. Get a nice apartment you can see the sky from and pay a year’s worth of rent and relax for a second.”

She wasn’t going to listen, but then time went on, more things at work got cut (not executive salaries, of course), and fewer positions seemed to get posted. The CEO’s temper got short, and she was getting taken to task for not meeting deliverables with half her team. 

“I don’t understand why we missed the mark here,” he had said to her during their most recent one-on-one.

“There isn’t anyone else who can do what my Acquisition Marketing Manager did, and you didn’t let me backfill his role,” she answered calmly. His face got red and he just repeated something about her needing to figure it out. She had. She put her house up for sale. 

When Charlotte announced her departure, Gidget had less than half of her team. The ripple through the company went fast. Slack channels were blowing up and most of the leaders did their best to ignore them. Head of HR became Head of Toxic Positivity, and Gidget didn’t know if that was because she really believed it all or if she couldn’t stand the thought of it all going under. She had heard that Head of HR was employee number three back in the startup days and had a lot of equity at stake.

By the time the board announced the “reorganization”—which basically meant that the CEO kept his job, along with the Head of Legal and the Head of Product, but everyone else was being let go—Gidget had signed her new apartment lease and booked a trip to Spain with Bri. She had heard the CTO was going to sue and had unleashed some wild conspiracy theories in his team meeting when he gave them the news. What was left of her team, though, she told them how valuable they were. They were all mostly junior and more likely to find gigs, but she still wanted them to know that they were important.

“You helped me turn this team around. We are award-winning. We added value. All you have is your integrity at work, and all of you have shown that to be stellar. I’ll miss you and I’ll keep in touch. And I will also be the best reference you need.” They were solemn and quiet but all sent her their personal contact details right after.

When she got the email about the reorg though, her proudest moment was telling Head of HR (who looked shell-shocked, by the way) that the only person she would talk to about her package was the CEO. When he laid out the package, she was quiet.

“I don’t think that reflects my contribution, unfortunately,” she said. “I know what we gave to this company and that many of the deals we got were because of what my team did. We brought business value. I’m happy to talk to my lawyer, but I think I deserve more. I know you have to pay out the rest of my contract, but I also know that this equity number can be better.”

His face was red. He stammered. She remembered her interview with him. She remembered her first one-on-one. All we have is the impression we leave with others, she thought to herself. I won’t feel guilty for this momentary discomfort he’s feeling just so I know my worth.

“Let me get back to you,” he said. She had never negotiated for herself before and was embarrassed to admit that as an executive, but she wasn’t born an executive. She didn’t come from executives. And nothing in her background ever told her that she could advocate for herself without paying a cost—for getting above her station, or acting beyond where she came from, or being labeled aggressive.

“What will you do now?” Bri had asked her as they ate fresh bread dipped in olive oil you could only get there in Marbella.

“I’m getting a case of this olive oil tomorrow and shipping it home now that I have a doorman,” Gidget said. Bri rolled her eyes.

“I meant now that you are unemployed!” Bri said.

“Charlotte texted me about some consulting work, but honestly, I think I need to drop some baggage. You take a job that you know you can do, for people you want to help, for money that changes your life, and then you feel your insides start to collapse. And you do things to make sure you’re still able to function to do that job. It takes a toll on you. I’m glad I made a way for myself to breathe. To decompress. To unlearn, you know?” Gidget took a sip of her wine.

“Look over there!” Bri shouted, pointing at one of the many beautiful rooftops.

“What?” Gidget just saw sky.

“A green flag waving right there,” Bri smiled.
Gidget smiled, and a tear rolled down her cheek that she wiped away quickly, closing her eyes.

Special Announcement!

I was lucky enough to be amongst some amazing HR voices recognized in The Most Inclusive HR Influencer List (huge thanks to Micole Garatti and her sponsors for putting this together!)

What I love is that this list is mostly made up of people who have done the work of HR and People strategies - not just thought leaders. Thought leaders because we have thought about how to make the work better while doing it. And some of these people I’m lucky enough to have in group chats and DMs!

Sponsors: Reimagine Organizational Development, Executive Women of Command (EWOC),  PartnerSpring, ASAD Ventures, Living Corporate, TRAP Recruiter, and MKG Ventures

Are you an organization or brand that wants to fix work? We help organizations get stronger by embedding equitable practices into their People Strategy which results in a stronger operational business model setting you up for a healthy business.

Disengagement? Challenging hiring processes? People not professionally developing? Overwhelmed managers?

We got you. Through specially designed programs, audits, contracts, or fractional services, you don’t have to guess at making your workforce strong.

Wanna see your name here? Contact us about sponsorships and promotions. Our target audience is everyone at work—from interns to CEOs.

We fundamentally believe that conversations need to happen across levels for real change. We’re just getting started, so join us.

Reply to this newsletter—we got you.